Hormones & ADHD :Adele Wimsett shares the power of cyclical living

Podcast Episode Description: Embracing Cyclical Living with Adele Wimsett

In this empowering episode of Ambitious ADHD we dive into the world of holistic women's health with the incredible Adele Wimsett. As a Women's Health Practitioner and Cyclical Living Guide, Adele brings a unique blend of wisdom, bridging the mystical and scientific aspects of womanhood.

Guest Bio:
Meet Adele Wimsett, a passionate advocate for menstrual education and author of "Essential Feminine Wisdom." With a background in Women's Health and Cyclical Living, Adele specializes in supporting ADHD women, unraveling the connection between hormones and traits. As the host of the "Essential Feminine Wisdom" podcast, Adele shares her expertise and invites inspiring guests to explore the transformative power of embracing one's cyclical nature.

Episode Highlights:

• Discover Adele's journey and the inspiration behind her focus on women's health.
• Explore the intersection of hormonal fluctuations and ADHD traits in women.
• Uncover the essence of cyclical living and its impact on well-being throughout various life stages.
• Learn practical tips for aligning with your natural menstrual rhythm and embracing cyclical living.
• Gain insights into Adele's experience with the Healy device and its role in holistic health practices.
• Explore behind-the-scenes moments from Adele's podcast, "Essential Feminine Wisdom."

Show Notes:

Introduction to Adele Wimsett:

1. • Women's Health Practitioner & Cyclical Living Guide
   • Co-author of "Essential Feminine Wisdom"
   • Specializes in supporting ADHD women and understanding the hormonal influence on traits
   • Host of the "Essential Feminine Wisdom" podcast
2. Key Topics Discussed:
   • Integrating the Healy device into holistic health practices
   • Choosing podcast topics and resonant episodes
   • Personal daily practices and rituals for cyclical living
   • The inspiration behind "Essential Feminine Wisdom"
3. Find Adele here:

               https://harmoniseyou.co.uk/
              Email: adele@harmoniseyou.co.uk

           Find Katie Here:
           Email: info@katiestibbs.com

Website:https://www.katiestibbs.com/

Powerful change work to return you to your most empowered resourceful state 
Practical protocals: To change any habits behaviours and thought processes and beliefs
that are holding you back, from experiencing your desired life
Tools to  simplifying your life and achieve happy success by embracing your authentic self.

Transcript

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the podcast Ambitious ADHD, where we aim to change the conversation around neurodiversity, to talk about our challenges, our strengths, but to really learn to finally be ourselves because everyone else has taken hello and welcome to the podcast. And I am genuinely excited about this because I have a guest on with me today, Adele Wimset, and she is a women's health practitioner and cyclical living guide. She has co authored the book Essential Feminine Wisdom and she is absolutely passionate about educating women and girls on how to harness the power of their cyclical nature. Adele bridges the woo and the science supporting women to balance their hormones naturally and is passionate about speaking on all things menstrual education. Adele specialism within the women's health arena is specializing in supporting ADHD women to understand how their hormones affect their traits. Welcome Adele.

Speaker B: Hey, thank you for having me.

Speaker A: Oh, I'm seriously so excited because I am slightly ashamed to admit I do not know much about this topic.

Speaker B: Oh, no shame, have no shame. We're going to explore it today. You'll be loads of knowledge after this.

Speaker A: Yeah, I cannot wait actually, and mainly because I've got the Morena coil and I've literally just dismissed all of my cycles for many years, which is interesting actually, isn't it, considering all the other things that I do. But anyway, firstly, can we start where we always start in finding out about your particular journey with ADHD?

Speaker B: Yeah, of course. My previous career, I spent 20 years working within the criminal justice system, specializing in female offending. And one of my lead areas there was special educational needs. So I was very well versed in ADHD, in naughty little boys, effectively the kind of outdated stereotype is, and I used to joke at the time I was in a senior management position and I did a lot of coordination work to work very closely with the mental health teams. And I used to joke and say it's just my ADHD with how I would practice and what I would do and how my brain was. And I would joke about that because really when I was training many moons ago, women couldn't have ADHD, so I would use it in that way, but never really thought that I did. So it wasn't really until after lockdown, by which point I'd already retrained in the women's health world and had my own clinic when there was a lot more information available about how differently it showed up in women. And I started to see traits in my daughters. And for me personally, I wanted to role model how to manage that. What does that look like what does it mean to have a diagnosis? So I met with a psychist talk, actually. And within a couple of minutes of talking to him, he said, but, you know, you've got ADHD. And I just burst out laughing. And within four weeks I was diagnosed and I'd always thought, what do I need a diagnosis for? I'm successful in life in inverted commas, whatever that means. I've done okay. I've got this far. I'm in my early 40s. What's the point? But actually it was the most validating experience of my life and I have been on an unraveling journey since then, both reflective, looking back and understanding about myself, offering myself so much compassion and kindness when I don't operate like other people, understanding why, and of course, because of my work. My instant was, oh, how are my hormones affecting this? What's going on? And I was furious with what I found, where my inner feminist was raging that so much of what we know to be true about ADHD is based on these naughty little white boys and basically the entire female experience is missing. So I've made it my mission to address that and begin to integrate the world of women's health and ADHD. So that's my story in a nutshell.

Speaker A: Wow, that is like, there's so much that I want to unpack there with you. Firstly, so your first career, can I just touch on that a minute?

Speaker B: Yeah, please do.

Speaker A: What kind of guided you into that first career?

Speaker B: I was interested in it. And again, when we go through the unraveling that I speak about this reflection, I was always something that was probably, I mean, we wouldn't have been picked up. I was a child of the 80s. ADHD wouldn't have been picked up at me with the best role in the world. But I was very academic. I was immense. I loved to learn, I thrived on learning. So I would have been missed anyway because I wasn't a problem to teachers, but I went on to do a degree that I was interested in. Now, despite being very academically able, had I chosen something that I wasn't interested in, I would have really struggled. But I chose a degree that sounded really sexy and exciting, which was sociology and criminology. And then when I was doing it, I thought, oh, what am I actually going to do with this once I've got it? And I started volunteering at the youth offending service and it just progressed from there.

Speaker A: You did actually love that career?

Speaker B: I loved it.

Speaker A: What exactly were you doing?

Speaker B: I love a lot of that. I was dealing with really high risk offenders managing risk, there was a lot of scope for creativity, setting up different risks. So we set up the gang initiative, the child sexual exploitation initiative. There was lots of really interesting work and of course, when I was doing frontline practice, which I did for a long time with face to face with young people who'd committed offenses, every day was different. You never knew what you were going to get walking through the door. So it kept my interest and there was lots of room to develop specialist interests and lead areas, which meant reading the research and creating interventions. So it was really varied and an exciting energy to work in. I was prisons, I was in police stations, I was in courts, people's homes. It was really varied. So it was great for an ADHD brain.

Speaker A: Yeah. What was the downsides? Kind of. You said you kind of realized that you might have ADHD. How did you realize, how come to realize that?

Speaker B: During that time, even though I used to joke about it, it was one of those things that I'd say flippantly and didn't really integrate as a truth, if that makes sense. But one of the big things with this kind of work, there's a lot of admin, there's a lot of sitting and typing up notes of sessions, and that was tediously painful for me. And because it was so boring to me, I would make multiple typos, there'd be words missing, there'd be errors. Or I often say, one of my toxic traits is I speak at 100 miles an hour and people struggle to follow me and what I'm saying. Or I had this capacity to have, like, 30 things ongoing at the same time. And even though it looked chaotic to anybody else, I knew exactly what was happening where, and I organized things in a different way, so it'd be things like that. One of the things for us is we're great in a crisis. We're known to be very calm. So, for example, something might kick off between two gang members at a reception area and I'd very calmly walk into these. I'm only little, these kind of big guys, separate them, sit down. It wouldn't bother me, those kinds of things.

Speaker A: Yeah. When did you end that career and what prompted you to create this new career for yourself?

Speaker B: Yeah. So I finished in 2017 because alongside my career, which I was genuinely passionate about and loved, my hobby and interest was health. So we hyper focus on things. So if there is a new. We're always wanting to learn things. You'll often meet ADHD people who have got a whole array of skills in all different things and qualifications. And I loved health and wellness. So I trained to be a Reiki master. I trained to be a reflexologist. I was just very interested. I was very health conscious. And at the time, I was doing all the things that I thought were healthy. I was doing the fasted exercise. I was on a ketogenic diet, I was on raw food, blah, blah, blah, all these things. And then my periods vanished. And I thought my initial thought was brilliant, one less thing to worry about. But intuitively, I knew there was something wrong here. This was at a time we weren't talking about women's health in the way that we are now. And so I began going down a rabbit hole, as we often do. And what I found was that so much of the information women are given from a medical perspective and from a functional lifestyle perspective is based on what works for a man and a male physiology. And we have a very different endocrine system, but we're left out of research because we have this cycle, which basically means we're too expensive to research. So they either shut our cycle down with the pill so that we can be analyzed as if we have the same hormonal process as a man, which makes us easier to research. But this means we have this massive gap in data about what is effective for a female physiology of a menstruating woman. So I was doing all these things I thought were good for me, but actually it was annihilating my hormonal health. And then once I understood this, lit this fire in me to learn the truth about women's health and to share that with as many women as possible.

Speaker A: And so where did you start? How do you go about finding the real, true facts?

Speaker B: Well, I began with the research, looking at things like the ketogenic diet, the studies. But I say I bridge the science and the woo. I believe once you put these intentions out there, the information kind of starts coming to you. And I trained, suddenly information about an incredible woman called Miranda Gray, who does a lot around womb healings and the phases of a woman's cycle. And I went along to her training, not overly knowing what to expect, and I just sat and cried for a couple of days while I was there, saying, this is it. This is the missing piece. We are cyclical, and yet we're trying to live like men who do the same thing every day, are linear from a hormone perspective, whereas we go through this ebb and this flow every single month. As our hormones fluctuate, so do we. And yet we're trying to show up in this world that wants us to be the same every day. So that's how I began to understand it from an energetic perspective. And then I was like, well, now, what's the physiology that's supporting this? So I went on to train with, again, another incredible woman, Nicole Jardim, who wrote fix your period. And I read every book I could get my hands on and just bought it all together until I had this feminine model of health and well being to share with my clients.

Speaker A: Oh, my God, this sounds amazing. So tell me what that model looks like. How is it implemented?

Speaker B: Yeah, so the first step that I take with most women is to ask them the question, do you know if you're ovulating? And most women have never been taught this. So I want to caveat this with saying this is a reclamation of knowledge. This isn't new. But our old friend patriarchy has spent the last 5000 years eroding this knowledge from women. We would have sat in red tents where generations before us would have taught us about our body and these changes, but that's all gone. So this is just reclaiming what once we already knew. And so what I'm very passionate about doing is educating my clients about their bodies. So once we know if you're ovulating, then that begins to create a picture of what hormones you're producing in your body. And then if you're not ovulating, we want to understand why, because our brains have not caught up with the fact that we're all flipping superwomen, juggling all the balls, doing everything, changing the world. Actually, all it wants to do is get us pregnant each month. If we go back to victorian times, our life expectancy was 40 years old. So in a very short space of time, we've almost doubled our life expectancy and are living a lot longer when we're not cycling. So we're really needing to look at what is happening on a monthly basis with our individual hormonal fluctuations. So that's the first thing I want women to track. I want them to know their body changes each month as the hormones ebb and flow. And then once we have that, I want to know what symptoms they've got. I want to have a look at what's showing up for you. How are you feeling at different phases of your cycle? And then we look at that within the context of the hormone hierarchy. So oestrogen and progesterone is what we tend to focus on. But actually what's happening with the queen bee hormones, what's happening with cortisol what's happening with insulin? That's what we want to be focusing on. And then when the body feels safe, it can ovulate. So if I bring it back to this point that we are just meant to be procreating from our body's perspective every month, all it's interested in is, am I safe to make a baby? So am I safe to produce this egg? And if it's not, then why is that? Is it because we're too stressed out? The brain doesn't realize it's this 21st century stress. It thinks we're about to be eaten by a bear all the time, in which case it's not safe to get pregnant. If we're completely removing entire macronutrients from our diet, like a carbohydrate, it's going to say, well, you're not safe to get pregnant. There's a food issue. So that doesn't happen in a man's brain, it happens in our brain. It picks up and sees these deficiencies. If we're fasting aggressively till 12:00 every day or living off caffeine, it's not going to think it's safe to make a baby. So therefore we start to create these imbalances and deficiencies. Does that make sense?

Speaker A: It makes total sense. So what you're saying is irrelevant of whether you want a baby or not and irrelevant really? Well, you might not be saying this of how old you are. We need to know these things in order for us to be living physically, feeling well and working with our cycles.

Speaker B: Absolutely. If a woman's hormones are not balanced, you cannot feel well, right? They're fundamental to how you function as a woman. So getting those as a priority is going to change everything for you. Hormones are the most powerful biochemicals in the body. They influence every bodily system. Your brain is covered in oestrogen and progesterone receptors. If we haven't got the right balance, the goldilocks amount. I know some people get triggered by the word balanced hormones, but if you haven't got the goldilocks amount of the hormone that your body needs, you're going to find it hard. I think this is things that I find really sad in my clinic, is how conditioned women are to feel like **** and just put up with it. We're conditioned to think, oh, it's not that bad yet. I hear that so often. Why haven't you accessed help sooner? Well, because it's not that bad. And these women, if we hold it, we slowly become desensitized to how horrible we feel and then we don't want to be a pain to ask for help. Yeah.

Speaker A: So I'm also thinking that I could, because obviously I'm me, so I can talk about myself. I could potentially, with the right help, even though I don't realize I'm kind of really maybe possibly feeling under the radar because it's how I've always felt. I could potentially come to you and then realize that everything is askew and have the potential to feel like, so much better than I do already. But I just don't necessarily know about it because this is how I've always been kind of feeling and living.

Speaker B: And we're told as women that it's normal to suffer. Right. That's the subtext to our culture, period. Pain is normal. It's not normal. Okay. PMT is not normal. These things we've been conditioned to think are normal because they're common. So when something's common, we normalize it. And it's not normal to have those things. And there are multiple things you can do from a lifestyle perspective that aren't hard, that can make a big difference.

Speaker A: Can you give me some examples of how you do work with people on that level?

Speaker B: Yeah, of course. I mean, most people want to throat punch me once they get my consultation. It's quite robust, but I gather a lot of information which I analyze before I meet with a client, and that gives me a really good idea of what I think is going on. So that when I meet with them, we've got this, I can really maximize my time with them to one, empower them with knowledge. Because most people practice by going, oh, I've looked at your consultation. This is your plan, go and do it. But to me, again, it's that the medical system is completely disempowering. I want women to feel empowered, to advocate for themselves if they need to, but also to understand their bodies and why I'm making the suggestions that I am, because that helps to motivate change. So I don't put people on diets. It's not about that. It's about teaching you how to live, to support your hormones. So I want to look at how you're nourishing your body. We want to get rid of fasting unless you're doing it in a very specific way around your cycle. And most women don't have the knowledge they need to do that properly. I want to make sure that you're not avoiding macronutrients, that all of the macronutrients and nutrition that your body needs to produce your hormones, is there. I want to look at your blood sugar regulation, I want to look at your adrenal function. How is your thyroid functioning? How is your liver processing the hormones? How's your gut eliminating those hormones? It's a whole body system to have a look at and then begin to say, okay, let's have a look at. What are some of the practices you can bring in to support the liver? What are some of the practices you can bring in to balance your blood sugars? So it's a very individual approach, depending on what that woman's needs are?

Speaker A: Yeah, because I can imagine everyone is so different, aren't they?

Speaker B: They are, but there's these key principles. It's nourish yourself, this non negotiable stress mitigation, particularly in our perimenopause. All years looking at that blood sugar regulation, I would say once I deal with adrenals and blood sugar in perimenopause, about 70% of symptoms go, because we're in this pattern at the moment where we're just chucking more and more HRT at it. And it's great that it's become so much more accessible, but it's also not coming with the knowledge that it needs to get the foundations right.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Oh, this is fascinating.

Speaker B: Well, once we start dealing with these foundations, you know what you're really left with. So, for example, sleep disruption has a massive link with blood sugar regulation, yet we're trying to kind of deal with that with other medical responses and actually. Well, let's deal with that first and then see what you're left with, so that you're really specifically targeting perimenopausal symptoms with HRT, rather than things being caused by other hormonal imbalances.

Speaker A: Right. So what do you mean by that? So blood sugar, if it's regulated right, directly, really enables your sleep to be of much better quality.

Speaker B: It is huge. It is absolutely huge. And particularly for ADHD people, we know we're at much greater risk of type two diabetes. So it's even more important to include this in any health plans. But it's about looking at how do you feel when your sugar goes really high in your blood and when it crashes down, how do you feel? So I suggest a device called a continuous glucose monitor, which is an amazing device for change because it gives you such specific real time data about how your body is responding to certain foods and how it's making you feel. So, for example, if your blood sugar drops low, it can make you feel really anxious. It can cause insomnia, it can give you brain fog, but you might never make that connection. And if you're living like that day in, day out, then you're going to think, have I got anxiety? What's wrong with me? Why can't I sleep? Whereas actually, once we balance out the blood sugars through lifestyle, which is quite simple to do, it's not always easy, because it is lifestyle change. It's quite simple things, though, and it doesn't cost money. The energy goes up, we don't get these afternoon crashes, we get rid of this unexplained weight on our tummy, we get rid of our sugar cravings.

Speaker A: I haven't got one of these, but you know the Zoe.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a much cheaper version. Basically, for about 50 quid, you can get one in the back of your arm and you've got an app on your phone, you just tap it and you can see exactly what's happening.

Speaker A: Wow, this is absolutely fascinating. You're also suggesting as well, or you know, about hormones and understanding kind of traits with ADHD.

Speaker B: What do you mean by that?

Speaker A: Exactly?

Speaker B: So I love this. So many hormone symptoms of hormone imbalance can be the same as some ADHD traits. So this is, for example, a challenge for perimenopausal women. It's like these things flare up. But what is it? Is it my adhd? Is it hormonal imbalance? So my job is to deal with the hormones so you know what you're left with, with the traits. So actually, there's this inextricable link between neurotransmitters and hormones. Now, no one can agree what causes ADHD. Is it not enough dopamine? Is it that we detoxify it too quickly, blah, blah, blah. It doesn't really matter from this point for this discussion, it's the fact that we know our hormones affect how sensitive we are to neurotransmitters. So, like dopamine and serotonin, for example, during phases of the cycle where oestrogen is higher, women, ADHD women, tend to function a lot better because the dopamine is on point, the serotonin is there, lifting our mood. So all of these strategies that we might have consciously or unconsciously created, so we function like we do, they work quite well. Now, as we see this sensitivity to oestrogen withdrawal at the other phases of the cycle, suddenly the lid comes off. So we know from research that ADHD women are at greater risk of postnatal depression, PMT, something called PMDD, which is like an extreme version of PMT and also a much more challenging perimenopause. So we see this link there, but it means that during that time, once there's no oestrogen supporting us in the same way, the lid comes off and we can get very overwhelmed. Our traits go through the roof, can't cope sometimes. And then of course, the cycle begins again. That oestrogen starts to rise and we just go, oh, it's having a bad week. And this is one of the reasons I think so many women are delayed in their diagnosis is because they're consistently in the same place, whereas we fluctuate with how we're coping.

Speaker A: Oh, gosh, it makes you so cross.

Speaker B: Get me going. Yeah.

Speaker A: But you must have seen, well, you've seen the impact of getting this right has on your clients. Yeah, I mean, it must be life changing.

Speaker B: Yeah, I would say it is. One of the things I love about ADHD women is we never accept no as an answer. There's always a solution. If someone says, that's not possible, we go, well, I'm just going to find another way. And we kind of constantly seeking solutions, constantly seeking answers down rabbit holes. How do we do this? And then we overwhelm ourselves and go into this paralysis state and do nothing. So my job is like, surrender all of that to me. I've done all of that for you. If you can trust me with what I advise you to do, then you can let go of all that and just move forward feeling better. So quite often we'll see a significant reduction in PMDD symptoms or PMT, being able to cope, being able to harness the power of the ebb and flow of the hormones to create an ADHD friendly lifestyle. So even if women do not want to do anything about their hormones, they just want to understand the impact the hormones have on their traits. We can do that because I've created a tool that supports women to track their traits against their hormonal fluctuations. And then we use the data from that with something called menstrual cycle awareness, where we apply the analysis of that data to their lives to make. For example, it might be actually during this week of my cycle, I am not going to do certain things, x, y and z. I'm not going to socialize, I'm not putting anything in that is brain taxing or I'm not traveling at that time. We just start to use the data to make things flow for them so they're not pushing against the tide. Wow.

Speaker A: Because just even knowing that makes such a difference to how you must live your life.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: Instead of going out and just having some kind of energetic up and out. Sometimes your energy is so big that you just feel like you're going to explode and then having a total meltdown, you just go out on those days. Exactly.

Speaker B: And be able to give yourself permission. Often we have learnt we're not good enough. We've developed perfectionist tendencies, always overcompensating for whatever lacks. We've developed this belief that we have. So to give ourselves permission and say, I can't that week, actually, this is what I need to manage my life. And I think some of that unraveling I refer to is accepting that the way we need to live is not the way neurotypical women need to live. We need to have a different approach. For example, this ridiculous expectation that every woman has this show home. I mean, great. If that's how you've got the time to do that and that feels good to you, wonderful. My house doesn't look like that. I have lots of things out on the side, because if it's not in my line of vision, I forget it exists. My supplements will be out, my nutribullet is out, my food processor is out in the kitchen, because if it's in a cupboard, it's too many steps for me to go. I need to get that out, I've got to get out the cupboard, I've got to plug it in, I've got to get it all together. Whereas if it's just set up, I'll use it.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B: Yeah. It's just creating, just accepting we're not going to be like that. Don't put these unrealistic expectations on yourself, because it will be twice as hard for us to fulfill those as it would a neurotypical woman.

Speaker A: Yeah, but just also knowing that these hormones and knowing how to change your life and your cycle, that is so powerful for you personally. Do you mind me asking about your personal kind of ritual? So what do you need to do in order for you to feel really at your best and thriving? What do you need, like food wise, exercise, all of that stuff.

Speaker B: So I just want to caveat this with. I'm often asked the question, do you need medication to manage ADHD? And I know that's not what you asked, but I think it's relevant to this conversation and I don't think you do. However, it's personal choice and lots of women thrive on it. But I think it can't just be this one narrative. We need to make it broader because some women do really well and other women do not. So what happens to those women who do not? And actually, even the women who do well on medication would do really well to address their lifestyle as well for things like I mentioned around type two diabetes risks, because quite often medication can mask symptoms of hormone imbalance. So, for example, it can mask appetite cravings that might be linked through to blood sugar regulation. So for me, I want to also acknowledge the privilege that I have to carve out an adhd friendly lifestyle for myself. It's taken work, it's not landed in my lap, it's taken work and it's taken time. But I work for myself so I can be flexible. The hours that I do, I do something I love, that continuously feeds my hyper focus and my interest. I get to be very creative. So I've created a lifestyle that works for me, but I have to have very robust health routines in place. Now, I find the consistency of those fairly easy because I'm interested in it, so it makes that easier, which is why I teach my women the why, because it helps to make that change. Because consistency is one of our strengths. But actually I have to maintain. I need to move every day in some way. I don't like to say exercise because I don't like to exercise, but I love to move my body in a way that feels good. I try and get outside as much as I can each day. I have tailored supplementation, I eat a blood sugar balancing diet, I have a very robust sleep hygiene, and I factor in every day, something that supports my adrenals. And then I work around my cycle, so they're the sort of key things that I bring.

Speaker A: What does that mean? So when you say support my adrenals, what do you mean by that?

Speaker B: So I will do breath work every day. I don't really do meditation, which I know is a bit controversial, but I don't believe meditation includes the feminine experience. It's quite often been shared with us from celibate male monks. But pleasure practices, women respond. That's our meditation when we activate our senses. So I might just sit in the morning before I start clinic for ten minutes with a cup of cacao, smelling it, tasting it and a journal, just prescribing what's coming up and having downloads, just factoring in every day, everyone has ten minutes a day. I know people feel like we don't, but everyone does. You can. Even if you have to lock yourself in a toilet and do that. I'll use essential oils to sit and just take a two minute reset. How does my body feel, is my brain feeling a bit like scrambled eggs at the moment? What's happening? What do I need to focus on? Do I need to do a download? Do I just need to go and stand in the garden barefoot and not move for two minutes? It's little practice like this. It's not sitting in a corner oming for 3 hours. It's just bringing in these little practices that just help keep your adrenals supported.

Speaker A: Amazing. I absolutely concur with that because everyone's obsessed with sleep hygiene. What does that look like for you?

Speaker B: So the biggest one for me is going to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time. Right. I used to be a dreadful insomniac and I would say that has been the biggest game changer. Everyone around me laughs if I go out, everyone's like, oh, Adele's going to be leaving soon. I'm like, yes, I am. I'm going to know. I have this really strict bedtime routine most of the time. Obviously, on my birthday, I might stay up a bit later. Avoiding alcohol. Alcohol is going to annihilate your sleep. No one wants to hear that, particularly when we love the dopamine hit that it gives us. But alcohol has such a big impact and make it a ritual. People can say to me, oh, before I go to bed, I got this massive to do list. I love going upstairs and think, oh, now I get to nourish myself, I get to rub some oils into my feet, I get to do a little bit of breath work, I get to brain dump, I get to have my diffuser going. I turn it into really sacred slowing down and special routine. So they're the things that work for know, they might not be everyone's cup of tea, but they're the things that work for me to optimize my sleep.

Speaker A: That sounds mean. I have a bath every night with the lights off. Sarah was laughing about this, but she told me to put the eucalyptus and the lavender above on the shower.

Speaker B: I was like, oh, that's so brilliant.

Speaker A: Yeah, just absolutely every night. I just love it. It's my go to perfect. This is so important, not only for every age group, isn't it, of women?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And are you finding a lot more younger people coming to you? Younger girls coming to you?

Speaker B: So what I tend to find is I tend to attract women generally in their perimenopausal years, because younger women tend to only reach out for help when they're trying to have a baby.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: That tends to be the pattern. Although I do see women who are younger with painful periods, regular periods, but what tends to happen is mum defer their daughters to me. So that's where I tend to find younger women coming to me.

Speaker A: Right, okay. And are you seeing like a pattern? More and more of people struggling to conceive? Women struggling to conceive, yes.

Speaker B: And perimenopause symptoms showing up a lot earlier.

Speaker A: Right, okay. And what are you finding is one of the main contributions to that, to them not being able to conceive? Are there any patterns of.

Speaker B: I would say stress is the biggest one, which has become. We're so desensitized to that word. When you look at what it actually does to the body, you can see, know, like I say, cortisol is a queen bee hormone. If she is out, her job is to save your life. If she is being pumped around your body all the time. Just because we live in the UK, in the western world, none of your body systems are going to be functioning well and your brain is going to say, there's a lot of cold sore in this blood. It's not safe to get pregnant. A lot of women like, are we going back to. They're not nourishing themselves. They think fasting is really good for them. Missing out these massive macronutrients, cutting out carbs, going ketogenic, thinking that fat is bad for them. We need these things to make hormones and the body feels safe. The body doesn't feel safe, it won't ovulate, and that means you won't produce progesterone. And then it's harder to hold on to a pregnancy. All these knock on effects.

Speaker A: Wow. And you know what I mean? I spent my youth literally starving myself like many other women. And I was a dancer, I was always the fat one. I was always put on the scales and told, lose weight. I have spent my life either just eating protein, so wonder. I got pregnant actually twice. Fasting, doing all of the things and because who the hell are you? Spoke. Because the information is just so different. It's like, who do you follow? But I guess for me as well, I was probably following a load of men in.

Speaker B: Most of my men do really well on these things, like aggressive fasting and ketogenic diets. They do really well on it. Women don't feel amazing. I'm like, okay. But the number of women I see in clinic whose hair is falling out because they're bringing in these practices, you might feel okay for a bit, but long term, it's stress. It's stressing your endocrine system.

Speaker A: Yeah, but we don't know about this, do we know? It's crazy when you think of it like that. Wow. Absolutely incredible. I'm just thinking about all the punishment I've given to myself over the years, haven't we?

Speaker B: And I find that so sad, the way that we have punished ourselves and continue to. It's good for us. Or to meet some kind of unrealistic expectation about what we should be doing or should look like.

Speaker A: Yeah, I was just thinking. I mean, tv is not the thing now, because not many people watch tv, but have you been on tv yet? Because this needs to be.

Speaker B: We need to know. Get me on tv, Katie, and I'll tell the know when you're just speaking.

Speaker A: Very plainly and know somebody that's supposedly been into their well being and blah, blah, blah. But I'm just thinking, my goodness me, I have really been behind the curve on this. And so coming back to me because I might as well. I'm here because I have the marina coil. How the hell do I navigate this for all the other women out there who's also on the marina coil?

Speaker B: Okay, well, let's talk about what the marina coil is. Okay. It's a very effective and cheap way to keep the lining of your womb thin. It's very good at doing that. It's very good at stopping ovulation generally doesn't always, but generally, it's very good at generally easing heavy bleeds. And it can be a very effective form of contraception for women. So it's got these pros to it. And any decision any woman makes about what she puts on her body is never an easy one. Is often lacking in the education and information that women should be being given to make a truly informed consent about things. But that's not readily available. So I want to acknowledge that so many of these choices come loaded with judgment. And anything I say here absolutely does not come from a place of judgment. I'm very passionate about sharing information that empowers you to make an informed decision about what you consent to being in your body or not. And that's because I don't feel that information is given as it should be. So I hope that's really clear with anything that I say here. Now, the marina coil is often pushed to women during perimenopause because of what I said. You can take oestrogen, HRT, and it will stop your womb lining getting sick and putting you at risk of things like endometrial cancer, which is great. The challenge is you are very often told, oh, that will just replace your progesterone. That's factually incorrect. It doesn't replace your progesterone. So we need to look at the role progesterone plays in the body. Our hormones do so much more, our estrogen and progesterone do so much more than give us a period or make us pregnant. They affect every system in the body. So progesterone, for example, protects your breast health, it optimizes your sleep. It's a keep calm and carry on hormone. It plays a role with something called gaba, which helps to keep us very calm, so it really supports our neurological health. It plays lots of roles in the body that really protect our long term health. Progestins don't do that. And actually what you will find is, if you look at the side effects of the progestins, they're virtually opposite to the protective benefits that body identical progesterones give. So that's the difference, actually. Progestins come from a testosterone chemical, and lots of women, particularly in the neurodivergent world, but also all women, can find they have a negative side effect of the progestin with their mood. So quite often we say, oh, I've gone crazy. If you feel like if you had a negative reaction to the pill, it's likely that you have a sensitivity to the progestins and could have that reaction to the marina, for example. We know that progesterone reduces the risk of having a blood clot, whereas progestins increase it. So we have these. They're very different. And like I say, lots of women get huge benefit from them, and that's amazing. But how many of those women have been given all of the information? And actually, when we look at studies that link HRT to cancers, progestin is the one that stands out. And yet this information is not being given to women in the way that it should do. And that's what makes me angry, it's.

Speaker A: That they're not being told, yes, you're so right. I don't think literally, it was a long time ago. It was after I'd had my second child. So I've had that call for a long time. And I don't think I was given really any information about it at the time, other than my doctor at the time said, oh, God, I've got one. It's brilliant.

Speaker B: You won't look back, pop it in, you'll be fine. That isn't some women's experience. And you may still make that choice with all the information. But you deserve to be given that information to make an informed decision. It's much cheaper to pop a coil in for five years for someone than it is to have a monthly prescription of body identical progesterone or to look at other forms of contraception.

Speaker A: Yeah, because I was just thinking, what are my other options here? I don't even know whether I'm in the, whether I've reached menopause totally or not. That's another thing. Nobody's monitoring me, nobody knows anything about me.

Speaker B: And that's the thing, you don't know. I mean, the only way you can really tell you're in menopause is to have a blood test to look at your FSH and LH levels, but you don't know because obviously your cycles have stopped, so your body's no longer producing natural progesterone, so you won't get that protective benefit from it. But when you say, what should I do? It's so personal, the choice that you've made, because what you should be doing is possibly exactly what you are doing. What's the reasons that you've got it for? What is the need that it's meeting for you and there could be multiple ones, and actually, if it's working for you and you're happy with it, wonderful. But actually, if you think, oh, I do want to see where I am, my cycle, or perhaps if, for example, women use it as a form of HRT, do they want to try body identical HRT? It's very convenient in that it ticks a box for contraception because most women don't want to start getting pregnant at 48. It has this added benefit to it. It really is so personal. But I would say if you're exploring it for HRT, have a real understanding of the body identical as well, and the differences in them in terms of their benefits.

Speaker A: And when people come to you, do you explain all of this, of what that means? And then they try it and then they see the difference?

Speaker B: Yeah. And I work with two incredible doctors who it's taken me a long time to find the ones, and they're amazing. They're so kind. They understand it, they care about women, they listen, they validate their experience, and they give really informed decisions around what's right for that individual woman.

Speaker A: Amazing. Now, I know that you have got a new clinic that is about to be birthed. Tell us about that.

Speaker B: Yes. So after my infuriated EDA feminist, she's not that innocent, actually. She's very outer. I wanted to begin to pull together the right people to create a resource for women that had everything under one roof when it came to ADHD management. So in March, we are launching the first integrative women's ADHD clinic, where you can get a diagnosis, medication if you want it. You can see a functional doctor if you have offer full blood testing, gut health, therapeutic support through compassionate inquiry. And also myself, in terms of looking at regulating hormones, understanding the impact on their traits, you'll get a real, really robust level of support if you want it. So, yeah, that's coming. And we're going to be doing. It's going to be a six month pilot, which we will hopefully publish the findings of how effective or not it's been at meeting ADHD women's needs.

Speaker A: Oh, my God. I mean, that is absolutely incredible. Well, I mean, hats off to you. That is absolutely amazing. Thank you. I can't wait to hear, I'm sure. I mean, how can it not be successful, to be honest?

Speaker B: I know, but there's the imposter sy go. Oh, gosh, I hope it's okay. It can't possibly not be.

Speaker A: I mean, just listening to you now for five minutes, let alone all of the rest of what the clinic is going to offer, it's incredible and it's what we need. So, well done.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: Can I ask you about. This might be a bit left field, actually, because I don't really know much about them other than the Healy device.

Speaker B: The Healy. So, as I say, I bridge the science and the woo and the healy. I believe that our most basic is the wrong word, but basic level, we are energy. Our cells are literally vibrating. And I came across the Healy device. I'd watched it for a while and saw these amazing results women were getting. I thought, oh, that can't be doing. That can't be happening. I know, and I really wanted to.

Speaker A: Buy one and I'm just so pleased that you're here to tell me about them.

Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. Oh, completely. And they're a bioresonce machine and they are very clever. The quantum sensor within it reads, it analyzes your energetic field and it will pick up imbalances that you have there and create a bespoke, tailored, energetic healing that it will run to you. So that's one of the things that it does. Since I have been using this, my life has changed at an exponential rate with how I manifest things, how my intentions become into reality, health goals. I use it on my whole family. And then the other bit. That's great. With it as well is it operates as a pain relief machine, so you can also use it a bit like a tens machine, really, to run electrical frequencies into the body. So it's got this dual purpose, but it's an amazing device to have.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: Literally, I've been sat here, funny enough, with it running on my gallbladder at the moment because I trained as a.

Speaker A: Quantum healing practitioner with. Do you know hillier?

Speaker B: No, I don't. Okay, so you need one. Yes.

Speaker A: They're always talking about that. They're different levels of them, aren't there?

Speaker B: Yeah. The healy itself is the same device, but you purchase different packages of frequencies, so the cost goes up in line with what frequencies you want. And they also have one called a mag Healy, which you can put inside your house and clear the energies of the house. I mean, it's really amazing. The devices are great.

Speaker A: Oh, I'm so pleased.

Speaker B: I actually know.

Speaker A: I've actually spoken to you about that.

Speaker B: Because it's really interesting. They do great offers. So if you want one, let me know and we'll get you the best offer.

Speaker A: Oh, amazing. That is so cool. And so coming back to you as well, because I'm nosy. I'm really nosy about people's kind of lives, really, as well as their professional lives. And I really just all want to know from anyone that I have on the podcast, what would your perfect day look like?

Speaker B: My perfect day? There's so many different options. My ADHD brain is pinging into so many different directions. Do you know what? If you ask me that at different time, my cycle, my answer would be different. I'm in my pre menstrual phase and I think swinging in a hammock on an empty, beautiful tropical beach by myself with someone, just bringing me lovely food and drink with a book is my idea of perfection right now.

Speaker A: Oh, God. Oh, my God. That sounds amazing. That sounds wonderful. And just in terms of your day to day, what does your day to day look like at the moment?

Speaker B: Oh, probably very dull and boring, I think. I get up in the morning, I usually wake up, my eyes ping open at 546, and I do a little bit of breath work just before I get going. I have a little minute in silence just to check in with myself, and then I come down and start my health routine. I often do at least 15 minutes of yoga before the kids are up. And I prepare all my breakfast and my lunch for the day. And then it's doing the boring school stuff, getting the kids to school, packing the bag up, screaming at them to come out the door because we're running late. And then back home, either at home or in a clinic that I run where I'm usually back to back most days, seeing clients or doing things like this. Then it's back on the school run, back home, cook dinner, and then if I go out, I get a lot of jomo, so I enjoy staying in, but if I go out, it'll be something that's really nourishing, so it'll be an ecstatic dance or a breath work or a cacao ceremony or kirtan or something like that, or I'm just in taking the kids to netball and gymnastics.

Speaker A: Yeah, it sounds perfect.

Speaker B: Sounds perfect?

Speaker A: It sounds right up my street. And have you got any kind of burning ambitions left to fulfill? I'm sure you've got things. They don't have to be burning ambitions, but what else do you want to kind of experience in the next ten years?

Speaker B: Oh, Katie, I'm just getting started. I'm very fortunate that I get these downloads just drop into me and I'm like, I'm going to make that happen and that's what happens. But my bigger goal at the moment is once my little girls get a bit older, so they're 911 at the moment, when they're a bit older is that every summer we spend a month living in a different country. So having. Getting a villa in Bali for four weeks and just going over there and I'd still be working and operating, but just experiencing a different culture, that's my biggest goal over the next ten years.

Speaker A: Oh, what a brilliant goal. What countries do you fancy?

Speaker B: My top two are definitely the Bali one and I want to stay in the mountains in Tuscany. That's another one on there. And we want to do a road trip all from the north to the south of Italy, where we're just stopping off and staying in different places. So that's my biggest focus at the moment for the big goal.

Speaker A: What a brilliant focus. And I've got absolutely no doubt that you're going to do it. Thank you so much for this chat.

Speaker B: Thank you for having me.

Speaker A: We're going to put all of your details of how best to contact you and your website in the show notes.

Speaker B: Amazing.

Speaker A: I mean, keep up this amazing work because it's really kind of opened my eyes into. I could be feeling so much better than I already do.

Speaker B: You can always feel better. There's always room for the next level.

Speaker A: Yeah, I've just loved it. Thank you.

Speaker B: Pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Speaker A: All right, thanks, Adele.

Speaker B: Bye.

Speaker A: Thank you for joining us. I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you would like more of this kind of stuff, join us at we love pupil school. For people that want to create lasting relationships, great communication and build a life that means that they can be fully themselves. Thank you for listening.